Reportage
Italian NGO worker Alberto Trentini has been held in Venezuela for over 120 days
On March 4, Undersecretary of State to the Prime Minister Alfredo Mantovano was the latest to give assurance of the Italian government's full commitment to bring Alberto home, while acknowledging that “the situation is extremely complex and difficult to resolve.”
Thursday marked 120 days from the arrest of Italian humanitarian worker Alberto Trentini, who is being held in a Caracas prison on terrorism charges, and his family has only one glimmer of hope to hold on to: the “certain proof” that he is in good health, which, according to ANSA, came “through a channel that keeps a dialogue open with the Venezuelan authorities” as early as Feb. 6.
On March 4, Undersecretary of State to the Prime Minister Alfredo Mantovano was the latest to give assurance of the Italian government's full commitment to bring Alberto home, while acknowledging that “the situation is extremely complex and difficult to resolve.” Giorgia Meloni herself has not said anything about the case. During the TV program Il Cavallo e la Torre, Alberto's mother, Armanda Colusso, once again had some words for Meloni: “I would like to look her in the eyes so that she understands how much pain is there, and I would like her to openly mention Alberto, also to make it clear that my son is important in the life of this country. The most important thing is to know that she will do everything to free him. So far, Alberto has had no contact with the outside world, and we must demand that he should have a consular meeting and be allowed to make calls. That is his right.”
As is known, Trentini, 45, an NGO worker with more than a decade of experience in international NGOs in Latin America, Ethiopia, Nepal, Greece, and Lebanon, had arrived in Venezuela on Oct. 17 and on Nov. 15 was detained at a checkpoint while he was on a mission from Caracas to Guasdualito, together with the driver of the NGO he worked for, Humanity & Inclusion, formerly Handicap International, an organization present in some 60 countries that was among the founders of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and also won the 2011 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize for its efforts on behalf of people with disabilities in situations of poverty and conflict.
His case is not an isolated one, further evidence of the hostility being shown by the Venezuelan authorities towards humanitarian workers.
Human rights expert Cristiano Morsolin, who spoke with il manifesto from Colombia, where he has been living since 2008, naturally compared Trentini's case with that of Colombian engineer Manuel Alejandro Tique Chaves, who worked for the Danish NGO Danish Refugee Council (DRC), for which Alberto had also worked, from February 2023 to April 2024.
Morsolin recounted that on September 14, Tique Chaves was similarly arrested by the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) on his way to Guasdualito, the same Venezuelan municipality on the border with Colombia – a drug and migrant trafficking corridor – where Trentini would be arrested two months later.
Likewise, nothing more is known about the fate of the Colombian humanitarian worker, accused by Diosdado Cabello of hiding behind an NGO to recruit paramilitaries, as DRC complained in an appeal to the Maduro government to “provide information regarding our staff member’s well-being, to allow contact with family, and access to consular assistance.” With one important clarification: “Our work is exclusively focused on providing humanitarian assistance to civilians in need, with no involvement in any political matters,” the Danish NGO stressed.
The accusation of “terrorism” against Trentini appears just as implausible, in a context – as Morsolin also stressed – marked by Maduro's “irritation at Italy's hostile attitude,” which translated in mid-January into the expulsion of three Italian diplomats from Caracas.
The Meloni government’s attitude even led on Nov. 13 to its inexplicable cancelling of a mission to Venezuela by the House Committee on Human Rights chaired by Laura Boldrini, who reacted with dismay to the decision: “The right wing that railed against Maduro is now preventing a parliamentary body from going right where the Venezuelan president operates?”
“What exactly is a Committee on Human Rights supposed to do,” she added, “if not go to the very places where human rights are at risk, as is happening in Venezuela, according to many testimonies? Are they perhaps forgetting that about 1.5 million citizens of Italian descent live there?”
Meanwhile, the solidarity of civil society continues unabated, with a relay hunger strike launched on March 5 and the “Alberto Wall of Hope” campaign – an online platform created to collect selfies accompanied by the image of the Venetian NGO worker – while the petition calling for bringing him home has collected about 80,000 signatures. As Morsolin points out, there are also those who are calling on the committee chaired by Boldrini to organize a mission to Venezuela as soon as possible, to “build a diplomacy of bridges, not walls.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/italia-venezuela-limportanza-di-riportare-a-casa-trentini on 2025-03-13